At this point, the man who controls the money has no choice but to let it ride. Same for the fans who supply it.

As Jerry Seinfeld once famously said to Elaine Benes: "Let the man make his soup." (Or as Ned Beatty once infamously said to the meanest of the two mountain men in "Deliverance": "This river comes out somewhere, don't it, cap'n? That's where we're going. Somewhere.")

Regardless of how you believe this thing is going to turn out or if Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has bent over backward so much to accommodate coach Chip Kelly's vision that he could wind up bent over forward, there really is no sense in wasting any more energy. Bemoaning the sudden losses of key players like quarterback Nick Foles, running back LeSean McCoy, wide receiver Jeremy Maclin and guard Todd Herremans or trying to figure out just what the heck Kelly is up to with this sudden and radical rebuilding plan will do no good.

Suffice to say Kelly has a plan and is being allowed to execute it without interference, which is something no Eagles coach has been able to do since Lurie was thought to have been hustled by used car salesman Norman Braman 21 years ago.

Turns out it was Braman who made the bad deal then. And although it won't take nearly as long to discover if this latest decision by Lurie to allow NFL neophyte Kelly total control of football operations will turn out the same way, a little more time is necessary.

Kelly hasn't even run his first draft yet. That's something former general manager Howie Roseman used to do before Lurie had a sudden change of heart and decided that everything should run through just one man.

For better or worse, the Eagles have become what the 76ers might have become under Larry Brown without the voice of reason, Pat Croce, keeping him in check.

In this case, Lurie finally rationally explained on Tuesday why he doesn't feel the need to place a similar governor on the seemingly out-of-control race car of a coach whose plan has never been told to anyone but Lurie and never will.

"There was a vision that I wanted to support," he said. "It's easy to say, 'Well, you had it going well and you already said you were going to stick to the status quo.' But I don't think that's the best way to operate. You learn after the season exactly how you might become better. And it was worth taking that alternative structure and acting on it."

Lurie on Tuesday said he had no regrets about his biggest gamble yet and is feeling better about it now than he did when he made it.

Kelly, who followed Lurie's Tuesday news conference with a mandatory one of his own Wednesday at the NFL owners meetings, wouldn't take it any further, however. The plan will remain a secret so long as he's in control of it.

But by now most have a strong sense of at least the methods that fuel Kelly's madness.

Kelly offered some of those insights Wednesday, starting with yet another suggestion that any trade the Eagles would have to make to get Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota in the upcoming draft would be too costly.

"Philosophically, I want to build through the draft," Kelly said. "So if you gut yourself for one year and one guy, philosophically, I don't think that's the right thing to do."

On the other hand, Kelly was stuck on the notion that the Eagles would somehow have to give up most or all of this year's draft picks to move from No. 20 into the top five, when in fact there are many other ways to get it done that include keeping most of their picks.

He even admitted some exceptions can be made to philosophical guidelines.

"People used to think the world was flat, philosophically," Kelly said, "until that guy took the boat and just kept going and it didn't fall off the edge, right?"

In other words, he kept the door to obtaining Mariota open.

Some other highlights:

• Money, not running style (as Lurie suggested a day earlier), was the biggest factor in deciding to trade McCoy for linebacker Kiko Alonso.

Even after the big contract given to free-agent DeMarco Murray, the money they're paying Murray, fellow newcomer Ryan Mathews and Darren Sproles in 2015 is less than what McCoy alone would have commanded.

In addition, they received Alonso, a player Kelly coached at Oregon.

• Kelly has established size/strength/speed parameters for each position for a reason.

"You can say our parameters are too tight, so let's expand them," he said. "But if you accept it, expect it. If you accept that you're going to take a 5-7 corner and the ball gets thrown over his head, you can't say, 'Boy he should've made that play. He ain't going to make that play. The receiver's 6-4. There's a give and take. It's a tough deal.

"If you take overachievers that aren't the right size at every position, eventually you're going to have a 5-10 nose guard with a 5-9 inside linebacker with a 5-8 safety. And they're going to run the ball right down your throat and you have no one to kick in the pants except yourself because you decided to make those selections. If you're going to have a standard in any operation — your business, your newspaper, whatever — I want a guy who's really good at this. He doesn't really fit the criteria but let's hire him anyway. Then you wonder why your business failed. It's because you lowered your standards to get to a certain point."

• Internal candidates Jaylen Watkins (safety), Earl Wolff (safety), Josh Huff (wide receiver) and Allen Barbre (guard) will be given opportunities to fill what appear to be the biggest holes now on the roster. However, Nolan Carroll will not be switched from corner to safety.

• Alonso is further along in his recovery from ACL surgery than quarterback Sam Bradford is with the same procedure, but Kelly clearly is a fan of medical science and believes it reduces the risks he took in giving away healthy, productive players to get them in return.

"The history in terms of sports science right now and what doctors are doing now, it's unbelievable," Kelly said. "Look at the year Jeremy Maclin had coming off of two ACLs. Look at our center. Jason Kelce had an ACL right before I first got there and had a sports hernia in the middle of the season last year and still made the Pro Bowl.

"Our left tackle [Jason Peters], who is arguably a Hall of Famer, is coming off of two Achilles [tendon injuries] and is playing at an outstanding level."

• Look for another wide receiver to be drafted early this year.

Although Kelly didn't predict it, he did say how deep he thought this year's class is at that position, and the Eagles obviously have a hole there after losing Maclin to free agency.